Tag: Principal Leadership

7 Truths to Improving and Managing Priorities

The life of a leader is full of surprises and the balancing of competing workloads and tasks is often one of the key causes of leader stress. Furthermore, managing multiple priorities can result in important tasks being either pushed aside or attended to, too late.

Managing leadership priorities is part of the job, but it can also drain you. A school leader carries competing demands, shifting deadlines, and constant interruptions. Without a clear approach, important tasks get delayed or missed. This post shares practical “truths” that help you stay focused and steady.

“Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed.” – Peter Drucker

Why Managing Leadership Priorities Feels Hard

Schools do not run in a straight line. A routine day can change in minutes. When you hold responsibility for people, learning, safety, and operations, the workload expands quickly.

Managing leadership priorities works best when you accept two realities.

  • You cannot do everything today.

  • You can still lead well with a clear plan.

Understand Your Limits

Knowing your limits is not weakness. It is a leadership skill. It helps you avoid overcommitting and making rushed decisions.

Start by naming your pressure points.

  • What drains your energy fastest?

  • Which tasks take you longer than they should?

  • Where do you keep saying “yes” out of habit?

Once you see the pattern, you can act on it.

Focus On What You Can Do Well

You are responsible for the whole school, but you cannot personally deliver every task. Your time is limited, so your attention must be selective.

Choose work that only you can do, or that you do best. Then create space for others to do their part. This is a key move in managing leadership priorities.

Look For Support, Not Heroics

Support is not a sign you are failing. It is how complex organisations function well. There are two simple benefits.

Share the Load Through Delegation

If someone else can do a task, delegate it. Your role is to get things done, not to do everything. Todd Whitaker’s idea in Shifting the Monkey is useful here: avoid taking on work that belongs to someone else.

Delegation works best when it is clear.

  • State the outcome you need.

  • Set a deadline.

  • Agree on the next check-in.

Get Good Advice From Peers

Peer support keeps you grounded. A short call with another leader can help you test your thinking and avoid poor choices made under stress.

This is not networking for its own sake. It is professional problem-solving. Shared communication is an asset when managing leadership priorities.

Stay Steady in Public

People watch the leader when pressure rises. Your tone sets the temperature. That does not mean pretending everything is fine. It means showing calm control.

A useful reminder from sport is: do not broadcast panic. Lead with steadiness, even when the day is hard.

Be Organised With a Simple System

Use whatever system you will actually maintain. A notebook, a digital task list, or a wall planner all work if you use them daily.

When deciding whether to take on a task, ask two questions.

  • What will happen if I do this?

  • What will happen if I do not?

Your answers help you sort urgency from importance. This is a practical anchor for managing leadership priorities.

Prioritise Tasks and Schedule Time

Do not rely on memory. Put tasks into time blocks. Decide what needs attention now and what can wait.

Some leaders like “eat the frog first” and start with the hardest job. Others prefer quick wins to build momentum. Either way, pick a method and stick to it.

Keep the Promise

In a busy school, it is easy to say, “I will get to that shortly.” When you do, your credibility is on the line. If you promise feedback, follow through. If you cannot, reset the expectation early.

Reliability reduces friction and builds trust. It also makes managing leadership priorities easier because fewer issues boomerang back to you.

Be Kind to Yourself

Some things will fail, even with strong effort. Some problems will sit outside your control. That is part of leading schools.

End the day with perspective. Learn what you can, then let it go. Tomorrow gives you another chance to lead with clarity.

Managing leadership priorities is not about doing more. It is about choosing well, delegating with intent, and protecting your energy so you can lead consistently.

Learning for the Future – Building the Right Learning Environments

In recent years it seems every country has revised their curriculum articulating the knowledge and skills that students need for the new global workforce. With the close scrutiny that accompanies changes to current practice, the debate on quality and success follows. The consequence of such scrutiny has seen international comparative studies of student achievement, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment [PISA], been used as the performance reference. This focus is such that “a global competition in educational achievement in core subject matter areas like reading, arithmetic/mathematics and science” has emerged.

A 21st century curriculum is now a live issue in almost every education system. Governments revise curricula to describe the knowledge and skills students need for a changing workforce. With that change comes scrutiny, and debate about what “success” looks like.

International comparisons often shape that debate. The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) measures how 15-year-olds use reading, mathematics, and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges, so it is often treated as a reference point. OECD+1

Why curriculum reform attracts so much debate

Curriculum is never neutral. It signals what a society values and what it rewards. When you change it, you change what teachers prioritise, what students practise, and what families expect.

Reform also raises a hard question. Are we strengthening core learning, or are we chasing the latest idea?

How PISA influences the conversation

PISA is not a curriculum, but it influences curriculum choices. It provides comparable data across countries and focuses on applied literacy in reading, mathematics, and science. In many places, headlines about rankings create pressure to “improve performance” quickly. OECD+1

Two cautions help here:

  • PISA is one lens, not the whole picture.

  • Test results can inform decisions, but they should not define the full purpose of schooling.

Designing a 21st century curriculum with skills and knowledge

Alongside PISA, many systems have pushed “future skills”. The Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21) framed this as a blend of strong core subjects and explicit skill development, shaped for a world where change is constant and learning never stops. ERIC+1

In practice, the 21st century curriculum is not a choice between knowledge and skills. It is about teaching knowledge in ways that build transfer, judgement, and independence. That requires deliberate planning, not wishful thinking.

Common skill areas to plan for

Most frameworks point to a similar set of skills that sit across subjects:

  • critical thinking and problem solving

  • collaboration and communication

  • creativity and innovation

  • digital and media literacy

Personalised learning environments: promise and pitfalls

Many schools responded to these pressures by redesigning learning spaces and programmes. Personalised learning environments can be powerful when they are designed around learning, not furniture.

The risk is surface change. The room looks modern, but classroom routines and expectations stay the same. If your teaching model does not change, the environment rarely changes outcomes.

If you have a short video that captured your school’s earlier vision, it can still be useful. Use it as a reflection tool. Ask what you would keep, what you would change, and what evidence you have gained since then.

Practical questions for school leaders

If you are leading curriculum review, use questions that keep you grounded:

1) What must every student know well?

Name the essential knowledge and the progression over time. Keep it tight, and protect it.

2) Which skills will we teach explicitly?

Do not assume skills appear by accident. Plan where they are taught, practised, and assessed.

3) How will we know it is working?

Use multiple measures. Include student work, teacher judgement, wellbeing data, and assessment results.

4) What will we stop doing?

A 21st century curriculum needs space. If everything stays, nothing improves.

A simple action plan for your next term

  1. Map your curriculum aims to a small set of outcomes.

  2. Audit where key skills are taught and assessed.

  3. Review tasks and units for depth, not coverage.

  4. Use PISA-style “real world” problems as one task type, not the only one.

  5. Revisit learning spaces and technology to ensure they serve pedagogy.

A 21st century curriculum works best when it is coherent. It protects core knowledge, teaches skills on purpose, and gives teachers the time and tools to do great work.

A few years ago, as part of an educational refurbishment to attempt to meet the learning needs of the “millennials” as a means to develop the necessary capabilities and aptitudes to embrace the future,  a personalised learning environment was created. This short video highlights our vision at the time. Time, and the explosion of personalised learning environments would indicate we were at the forefront of learning innovation.

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